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Two films by Marcel Carné are playing on Mubi in the United States as part of the series Marcel Carné, Arletty, Jean Gabin: Le jour se lève (1939), from June 7 - July 7, and Air of Paris (1954), from June 8 - July 8, 2017.Marcel Carné’s 1937 film Drôle de drame (Bizarre, Bizarre) feels anomalous when placed next to his classic dramas. Unlike the sincere emotion, heartbreak, and despair which characterize his poetic realist works, Drôle de drame is a lighthearted and rather frivolous comedy of manners. The film depicts a series of absurd events caused by a need to maintain appearances, following meek botanist Irwin Molyneux (Michel Simon) as he lives a double life, writing crime novels in secret. When his cousin, the bishop Bedford (Louis Jouvet), accuses Molyneux of having killed his wife, the married couple go into hiding rather than rectify the mistake. Molyneux emerges with his novelist persona in order...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Deanna Durbin in the 1940s: From wholesome musicals to film noir sex worker (photo: Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin cast against type in the un-Christmas-y Christmas Holiday) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin Without Joe Pasternak: Adrift at Universal."] The Deanna Durbin vs. Universal dispute was settled in early 1942, when the actress was supposedly granted director and story approval. But things didn’t go all that smoothly from then on. There would be no loan-outs to the more opulent MGM, and Durbin would later complain that Universal refused to abide by her requests. Also, for the first time since her career skyrocketed in 1936, Durbin was absent from the screen for a whole year. The key reason there were no 1942 Deanna Durbin movies was the troubled production of her next star vehicle, The Amazing Mrs. Holliday, in which Durbin tries to smuggle Chinese orphans into the U.S., and which underwent not only various title changes, but also various directors and various script...